Avi Snyder is ACTA's Senior Program Officer for Communications.
When the history of folly in college accreditation is written, the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools will command attention for its outstanding mishandling of academic fraud at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. Nearly three weeks after news broke of the imaginary classes and unearned marks for athletes at UNC, the accreditor acted–by […]
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A familiar campus drama just played out at Colgate: a few bigoted remarks, followed by protests (good), then a cornucopia of diversity demands, including major changes to the curriculum (not so good). The Colgate Association of Critical Collegians recently staged a sit-in on campus which drew support from professors and grew to 350 protestors by its […]
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In an expose published in the Weekly Standard, Mark Hemingway describes the waste, irresponsibility, and petty politics that plague student governments. At a small liberal arts college, this kind of student mischief would only cause minor problems. But at large state schools, where student governments control piles of cash larger “than many municipal budgets in […]
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Suppose you’re a wealthy investor, and an enterprising businessman comes to you requesting a billion dollar investment in his company. He promises an incredible ROI. Your interest is piqued, so you ask him for some data to justify such a large investment. “No can do,” he says. “That information is private.” Of course, you’d laugh […]
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Six million fifty seven thousand six hundred and fifteen dollars. That’s how much American’s highest paid public university president, E. Gordon Gee, made in his final year at the helm of Ohio State University. Gee was most certainly an effective and reform-minded leader. And, in fairness, his 2012-13 pay was especially high, as it included millions in deferred compensation as […]
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More than 130 members of the Wellesley College faculty are protesting the potential dismissal of a dissident Peking University professor and threatening to challenge the formal partnership Wellesley recently signed with the Chinese institution. In an open letter, the Wellesley protesters noted that Peking University will sponsor a vote on whether to fire professor Xia […]
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Civil rights law has distorted higher-education for decades. In Griggs v. Duke Power Co. (1971), the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that any employment requirement that has a “disparate impact” on protected minorities must be clearly related to the job’s demands. Moreover, employers are obligated to establish this correlation. Richard Vedder and Bryan O’Keefe have persuasively […]
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